Annotation:London Ladies

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LONDON LADIES. AKA and see "Advice to the Ladies," "Ladies of London." English, Air. The air appears in John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1729, Air XXXIII) under the title "If you at an office solicit your due." The melody was previously published as "Ladies of London" in Playford's Dancing Master (2nd supplement to the 7th edition, c. 1688), Henry Playford's Apollo's Banquet (5th ed., 1687, Part III, No. 13) and different editions of D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1707, and 1719-20, as "Advice to the Ladies"). The first stanza goes:

Ladies of London both wealthy and fair,
Whom every town fop is pursuing.
Still of your Persons and Purses take care,
The greatest deceit lies in Wooing:
From the first rank of the bonny brisk sparks,
Their Vices I here will discover;
Down to the basest mechanick Degree','
That so you may chuse out your Lover.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 60 (facsimile of the Beggar's Opera printing).

Recorded sources:

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